Adapting to Covid

Our Story – Adapting to Covid 19 and future of ASE
Covid has permanently changed our modern world. The Challenge is how do we, in business, react and change our own methods, habits, and activities to keep a sane, healthy, and financially solid life!
In the short term, we were forced to focus on something very new and adapt immediately to a new set of social rules that have affected our ability to enjoy our families and friends as well as sustain our sources of income.
The immediate challenge is to protect ourselves, and for many, to stem the economic losses.
On the other hand, there are some business segments which have been overwhelmed in a positive way by opportunity and demand. This presents its own challenges in stepping up to what might be a temporary windfall and learning how to sustain these business benefits.
Eventually we will return to some kind of normal in our society and in our business endeavors. The business owners who can adapt and/or pivot their business model to reflect this new business environment are the ones that will prosper going forward.
At ASE, we had practiced a business model of providing clients our service face to face, in a ‘smallish’ board room. Our clients would travel to our premises for their meetings. ASE was formed in 1963 so this method of offering an advisory service to small business, on a voluntary basis, had sustained itself for almost 60 years. I might add that much of our marketing over that period, up and unt
[three_fourth_last]il 2015, was based on face to face presentations, business shows, newspaper ads and referrals. Our major expense was rent as all our members are volunteers, giving back to the community. Our fee for service had been gauged to allow for a yearly break-even business; rent primarily and other necessary business items were our expenses.
In March 2020 we were out of business [or could have been]! We could not offer our service. Covid had cancelled in-person meetings!
Taking the situation in hand, within a few weeks we re-established our meeting venue to on-line zoom meetings and set up the tools creating a satisfying online environment for a 90 minute meeting.
We determined how many could participate in such meetings effectively, adjusted our fees to encourage our clients [now that our overhead was reduced] and reached out to see if we had any takers. To our surprise many of our clients embraced this new means of communicating and working with us; they could do it from their home! And our members were far more available as we do not have to drive somewhere and so timing, in some cases, has been cut in half. Beginning in April and up to now, we have as busy a schedule as we did pre-Covid and, like many others, our previous physical space has been unused since March.
However the challenge is not over for ASE. We are working now to understand, from our clients, what our business model might look like later in 2021 or 2022. We are improving the tools and processes we use for online sessions and we are looking to expand our market outside of the GTA. At the same time and to keep cost of office space down, we are investigating how we might have a hybrid business model. For those occasions when it is best to have an ‘in person contact with a client’, which we have always considered important, we would like to have an ad hoc location without the cost of a permanent space. Many uncertainties now mean we will have more decisions to make in this new business world.
ASE has successfully adapted within a space of months and with significant changes to its business model. It has been fortunate that ASE services could be ported readily to a new environment and one that our clients have willingly, effectively, and happily adapted to in this ‘new way’.
We hope for all of you that you can maintain your business in one form or another. For those who have maintained your business model, we hope you can glean some new ideas to innervate your businesses and/or make them more efficient. For those who will successfully return to your business with a new or reinvented model, keep positive and keep aware of the many possibilities within this changing environment.
Fletch Keating, ASE